Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

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Paper by Delfino and Salas on recall referendum results accepted for publication

August 11, 2008

Just for the record, the paper “Analysis of the 2004
Venezuela Referendum and the Relation between the Official Results and the
Signatures Requesting it on automated centers” by Gustavo Delfino and Guillermo
Salas has been accepted
for publication in the Journal “Statistical Science”. (You can download the
last version there)

I discussed this paper in
this blog before and have always believed that anyone that takes the time
to understand Figure 3 will never believe again that there was no hanky panky
in the 2004 recall referendum. The paper concludes that the results of the vote
were not accurate and that there were significant issues associated with the
results of the automated centers which showed and excessive correlation with
the results of the recall petition signatures. They also show that the conclusions
of the Carter Center report are exactly the opposite of what is found in their
paper.